welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour republicans hit the airwaves this weekend dismissing president obama's new immigration policy as political posturing is the president's decision all about the politics or is it a sign of greater immigration reform because also with mitt romney trying to become the first mormon president of the united states mormonism is someone suddenly become a popular and heated debate topic is mormon ism really a branch of christianity like many argue or do mormons consider it a separate religion altogether and our nation was founded as a secular state but nearly two hundred fifty years later our public schools are overflowing with religious education to tell you how we got here and how we can get

back to the ideals of america's founding fathers in tonight's daily take. in the best of the rest of the news president obama's decision at the end of last week to stop deporting young undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children has created quite the political firestorm despite being tougher on undocumented immigrants than any administration in recent history and in fact condemning thousands of american children to live in foster care by deporting their parents president obama is taking a different approach to immigration with the election looming several months away on friday the president announced his plan to stop deporting young undocumented immigrants who have a job and were brought to this country as a child. fact of immediately the department of homeland security is taking

steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people over the next few months eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization. according to this new policy if someone is under thirty years old brought to the country before they were sixteen been here for five continuous years with no criminal background and graduated high school or served in the military they will be immune from deportation an estimated eight hundred thousand undocumented immigrants will benefit from just this policy change this new policy by the way mirrors the dream act which was proposed by democrats and has been stalled in congress by republicans who favor mass deportations over commonsense compassionate immigration reform and it's nearly an exact replica of republican senator marco rubio's version of the dream act which allows young undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and

work or serve in the military the difference however between the two democrats dream act and senator rubio's the dream act is that under the democrats' plan young undocumented workers can be put on a pathway to citizenship under rubio's plan no pathway to citizenship roughly half of latino voters support senator rubio's dream act but ninety percent of latino voters support the democrats' dream act republicans have responded to the president's decision by calling it a politically motivated scheme to attract voters and democrats counter by saying it will give economic certainty to a large swath of the american workforce that lives in fear of deportation and this will boost our economy so how might this decision play out and what are the chances of comprehensive immigration reform moving forward here to offer their takes are rinku senate president and executive director of the applied research center and publisher of color lines dot com and saw a hi sahi. east coast organizer with the national day laborer organizing

network and welcome to both of you thanks for joining us tonight. thank you thank you. rinku son president obama has been harsher on latino's or undocumented immigrants than any president since i mean maybe going back to. eisenhower and even then i don't think any president's been as aggressive . even reagan i mean and the city are people is this going to buy him some political capital people forgive him for all how severe the the crackdown over the last three years has been. i don't think that this new discretion policy actually is for the minutes for the obama administration reputation that it has built for itself as being very very punishment oriented deportation oriented we're deporting some four hundred thousand people a year and about a quarter of those people are the parents of u.s.

citizens so no i don't think that this new policy you know wipes the slate clean for the administration in terms of the feelings that immigrants have however it is something to celebrate and it's really the result of all of the really great organizing that young people who are exactly in this very situation have been doing to bring attention to their plight and to press for change so what have you and your organization what's your position been on this and what's your take on what this whole situation my organization has been denouncing the president's deportation policy it's really an important only policy he promised comprehensive immigration reform but what we've seen is an unparalleled expansion of immigration enforcement policies such as the secure communities program and that's how he's gotten to this four hundred thousand deportations a year he really is the president has deported more people than any other president in united states history and that's the legacy that he's leaving behind and do you

see this as a change from that is a departure from the beginning of a new direction i'm definitely among the group of people that are hopeful this has the potential of changing the lives of my friends of my family members but at the same time i'm skeptical because we've heard other announcements similar to this that have resulted in essentially broken promises. a cure is your take essentially the same question what are what are you doing personally institutionally you know what's your position and what's your take on where this is going. well like many other immigrant rights communities we have we're definitely in favor of doing a very comprehensive reform the immigration system is broken and so many ways you know people working to get in people working to reunify with their families there's a very long wait list there are the quotas that we have on certain kinds of visas

are far lower than the demand that there is for those same kinds of workers. there are various problems i think what we've tried to do as an organization and color lines dot com is really help americans grapple with these collective choices that we have to make and grapple with them not just in economic terms although those are very important what are the contributions that immigrants bring and. how can we make the most of those contributions but really in terms of what we value as americans so if we value enterprise and we value families we value loyalty to the nation having an american identity that and those are some of the values that need to actually get expressed in the immigration policy choices that we make the sort of the there's a spectrum on the right from the libertarians who say there should be no national borders labor should be able to travel anywhere and you know just look to what the price of labor collapsed or whatever and then on the other hand you've got the jor

pios of the world what not margaret very narrow and so those are the kind of two ends of that spectrum on the progressive side there seems to be a less clearly defined. clearly defined balderas shall we say to the debate but i'm curious what you think is the ideal solution or or how you would define the beginning and do you know what's the least we take what's the most we should ask for kind of parameters well it's funny you mention sheriff arpaio because i'm actually going to arizona on thursday. and i actually was arrested by the sheriff when i committed civil disobedience against speed ten seventeen and were of course on you know waiting that the supreme court decision that may come down as early as this thursday i think the national day laborer organizing network and a number of immigrant groups have consensus around the need for family unity you know fathers father's day weekend just passed and even though the president made it

wonderful announcement about stopping the deportations of youth as rinko pointed out there are thousands of parents that have been deported thousands of u.s. citizens like myself who's whose father with his father has also been deported as a result of the broken immigration system so i think family unity is the central piece to any kind of immigration reform and of course honoring labor rights we don't want to create a system where workers are experiencing you know like slave like conditions you know working without pay exploitation and so we want to make sure that we are also ensuring that everyone's were working rights are are established and doesn't also speak to the to the you know i've used this is a almost a cliche for years but i think there's some truth to it i'd love to get your take on it that we don't have an illegal immigration problem in the united states or an illegal immigrant problem and you know states we have an illegal employer problem

in the united states reagan stopped in one thousand nine hundred stopped in forcing the laws against the exploitation of people who are here without documentation or without work permits and nobody has really picked it up since the. thoughts you know the thing is that employers in particular industries especially agriculture for example domestic work construction they have an endless appetite for labor that is cheaper i'm not i'm not at all saying that you know all employers are out to exploit their workers employers are out to make a profit that is the purpose of business is to is to make profits and so if we have an immigration system that enables a whole very big portion of our population millions of people tens of millions of people to be easily to have their wages stolen to not be able to have their

breaks to not have basic health and safety on the job and that situation is going to really erode working conditions for all american workers and by contrast when immigrants are here working the jobs that they're doing generate additional jobs and those additional jobs are generally being done by native born american peoples somebody picks an apple apple has to be cleaned and processed and shipped and sold so the our immigration system now really gives a lot of space to employers to do what they want while it criminalizes the workers and we have to even that out a little bit in general to have a situation an immigration policy that makes it easy and possible for people to move around and that makes it possible for immigrants to own themselves to own their visas and not to be at the total mercy of their employers so over here you want to just the forty seconds we have loved here i mean i absolutely agree with

but i think what's important to note is that the president has had a really troubled record with the immigrant and latino community on one hand he's made this great announcement on friday but on the other hand he's also been. the deporter in chief deporting four hundred thousand people a year more than any other u.s. president on the one hand he's filed a lawsuit against s.b. ten seventy in arizona but on the other hand he's expanded these programs that gave rise to ten seventy in the first place so i think it will be interesting to see whether this announcement comes to fruition and whether the president is really serious or rather he's just playing politics well let's hope it's the beginning of a new day thank you so thank you both for being with us thank you much appreciate. i don't remember when they used to be a separation of church and state in america when religion wasn't shoved down our children's throats in our nation's public schools well those days are long gone i'll explain why and that's still to be.

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you go is. with mitt romney trying to become the first mormon president of the united states mormonism is suddenly become a popular and heated debate topic and what inevitably comes up in a debate over mormonism is how similar it is to christianity with many arguing the mormonism is just a branch of christianity if you think that mormonism is just an offshoot of christianity and that it doesn't deserve consideration as an independent religion and everything you know is wrong joining me now is professor dave mason author of mormonism a primer for non mormons and mormons alike and an op ed contributor to the new york times his most recent piece is titled i'm a mormon not a christian professor mason welcome hi thanks for joining us sir why why do you think well first of all you say i'm a mormon not a christian can you explain what that means. well fairly straightforward you know i don't feel like i have to be identified with christianity is to find myself legitimate as

a religious person. so. bad to feel the need to define themselves a christian a catholic would feel the need to define themselves as a christian. i guess muslims acknowledge jesus in the new testament but they don't call themselves christians so there's a gap between those two things between the bad just the catholics on one in the and the and the more and the muslims on the other as mormonism fall in that gap well i don't know it falls in that gap or not i mean that would be that would be a question for. some kind of church historian or even a mormon theologian if you can find one my only point is that. i want to be able to represent myself the religious feelings that i have my understanding of the identity of jesus if i have such an understanding i think that it's mine to say and not either. a group of people calling themselves christians or or even other

mormons who aren't particularly happy with the way that i've characterized myself as a not a christian why do you think the so many mormons feel the need to identify themselves as christians. well mormons grow up with a concept of jesus as a divine person and for them what else is there in being a christian they get to be adults and then they encounter these these other groups who tell them that they're not christians even though that's the way they've thought of themselves from childhood in it's not an easy adjustment for them to make. and you know given that they given that they generally have a sense that jesus is divine they can't help but wonder why am i not a christian if this is my concept of this historical figure so why are they not. well i just don't feel the need to adopt the title anymore i mean i don't know if i'm if i am or am not there also

a different definition of jesus between mormonism and all of the both orthodox and and just conventional branches of christianity is there not oh yeah but i mean that isn't there isn't new in the history of christianity i mean concepts of the identity of jesus of esther christianity since the very beginning and you know mormonism has a sense of of its own a sense perhaps of what jesus is and what he means and what his identity is. and christianity as a whole may be what you call traditional christianity doesn't doesn't acknowledge that it's legitimate vision of what of what jesus is and then that's fine well isn't raises an entirely other question dave and that is who is the arbiter of christianity you know you know there is you know a clear arbiter of catholicism and there is of mormonism. you know i don't think anybody has at least in a few thousand years declared that they can speak the voice of christianity

probably the last one was paul and so it wouldn't be possible for the mormons to simply say hey we're the newest revelation we get it what christianity is everybody else is wrong the bad discern christians the catholics aren't christians the methodist aren't christians or the christians and if you don't like it tough. well mormons who do that in some mormons perhaps do do that and that seems more acrimonious than and necessary to me. i prefer thinking of the religion that is truly deeply embedded in me as as my own thing is part of my own individual identity and with legitimacy that i can speak with my own voice and i don't need somebody else to speak it for me what does a mormon in the white house mean. generally and for mormonism. in your opinion do you think. it was a mormon meaning in the way

a well i don't know let's let's let's see one get there first we're not there yet well there was a question like this about jack kennedy you know if they could and then the concern was if there's a catholic in the white house he might have to dance to the tune of the pope and jack kennedy came out and said i'm not going to do that if it has to do with the birth control or abortion or whatever it may be my position is the position of this country not of the pope well we can look at this and we can examine this sort of thing that this is paranoia that the election of mitt romney is going to mean that that the mormon church is all of a sudden in charge of the country it's still circulating and it flies in the face of evidence do i really have to remind the country that harry reid is also a mormon. and are a do we hear the same arguments that the mormon church is telling harry reid what to do when. we have yeah i mean there are several mormons actually in the senate in the house. very interesting dave thank you very much my pleasure thank you having me on appreciate your being with us now everything you know about the differences between mormonism and christianity is right.

public education is dying in the state of louisiana and religious freedom is dying right alongside it earlier this month the republican controlled state legislature approved a new school voucher program in louisiana that shifts tens of millions of taxpayer dollars away from public schools and toward private religious schools as in teaching kids in louisiana math science and history will no longer be in the hands of qualified unionized teachers instead it will be in the hands of profiteers and religious fundamentalists many cases who don't believe in science and don't think the history the world goes back farther than five thousand years this new voucher

program in louisiana achieves two goals first it hurts teachers' unions which tend to support democrats so the republicans are runaways and like that in two it gives the religious right an excuse through the disguise of religious freedom to embed their evangelism into another generation of americans and i say that is skies of religious freedom because that's all it is a disguise. there is no religious freedom in this voucher program the republicans and the few democrats who supported it had only one type of religious school in mind when they pushed for this program and that was a christian school that's why when an islamic school was approved for the voucher program while makers went nuts like republican state representative kenneth average who immediately changed his mind about the voucher program when he learned that a muslim school might be included say in our wall go back to hall and explain to my of people that i've supported this program that will fund islamic to jean and

democratic representative sam jones who said no really the church of scientology next year you see these guys don't give a rat's ass about religious freedom they're all about christian evangelism and trying to avoid a firestorm i hate the muslim school the islamic school with drew its request to participate the new voucher program leaving only the christian and the private for profit schools in the mix. so now kids in louisiana will no longer learn math science and history from professional teachers who work for we the people instead will be taught by either businessmen or religious fanatics who don't believe in science and think the planet began five thousand years ago and all of this will be paid for by louisiana's taxpayers and a good chunk of federal money thrown in right about now our founding fathers in unison must be doing a barrel roll in their graves that's because unlike these politicians in louisiana

our founding fathers didn't think religion had any place in our government at all you might have noticed how the constitution says a lot but it says nothing about god nothing about jesus nothing about christianity nothing about the bible and nothing about a creator and really the only thing it says about religion is in article six section three of the constitution reads no religious test she'll ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust of the united states you see the reality is that most of the founding fathers were christians they were deists who believed that the universe had a creator but that creator had nothing to do with the daily lives of humans and never intervened in the world through miracles or religious texts like the bible embracing this deism from benjamin franklin wrote in seven hundred twenty eight about why he didn't pray i cannot conceive otherwise than the heat of the infinite father expects no expects or requires no worship or praise from us other founding father thomas paine wrote in his book the age of reason all national institutions

of churches where the jewish christian or turkish appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. historian very schwartz describes our first president george washington's religious beliefs writing george washington's practice of christianity was limited in superficial because he was not himself great yet he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments never to take communion and when his wife martha did he waited for her outside the sanctuary even on his deathbed washington asked for no ritual no prayer to christ and expressed no wish to be attended by his church's representative and his thomas jefferson wrote eight hundred fourteen long after the constitution was ratified christianity never is nor ever was a part of a common law. in seven hundred ninety six our nation signed a peace treaty with tripoli what we now call libya and in this treaty negotiated by the george washington administration and signed by president john adams our

founding fathers made very clear the religious nature of the united states when they wrote the government of the united states of america is not in any sense founded on the christian religion unfortunately more than two hundred years after the treaty of tripoli politicians in the easy and elsewhere around the nation are trying to recreate reinvent the united states as a christian nation going against everything even the christians among our founding fathers wanted for the secular nation they've created as another one of our founding fathers james madison warned in one thousand nine hundred three the purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of europe in blood for centuries you know it's time to stop giving public tax money to evangelists and promote quality free and religion free public education again like we used to do you know that we put

men on the moon when we created the middle class when we established generations of entrepreneurs scientists and engineers like the world had never seen before that's the american way. that's it for the big picture tonight forget democracy is not a spectator sport not enough to his vote get out there get active tag your it occupy something.

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